Although Internet use is very widespread and of great economic and sociological value, the Internet contains a great deal of content that is not appropriate for children. As with the physical world, it is desirable that children using the Internet be supervised by involved parents. Parental control software exists that allows the filtering and blocking of content, but this software can be cumbersome and difficult for parents to use. Without configuration and use by the parents, the parental control software is ineffective. On the Internet as in the physical world, parental involvement and oversight are required to provide a responsible and healthy experience for children.
Even the most rudimentary of software/web based parental control solutions require configuration by a parent. This configuration introduces a hurdle which is “too high” for many parents. Parents say they are interested in protecting their kids online. Yet in practice, many parents do not take the actions required to effectively use the parental control systems they purchase. Perhaps even the simplest of configuration requirements such as opening a web browser, creating an account and downloading software to the child's computer is too difficult for many parents who are not familiar with computer use. Based on observed behavior, it can be posited that it is probably even “too much” to ask some parents to configure a child's computer with software which comes pre-installed with the operating system. It would be desirable to address these hurdles to usage of parental control systems.
The SecuriKey company markets a product called ControlKey®. ControlKey® uses a proprietary USB hardware encryption dongle that must be physically coupled to a computer for the computer to run. To install ControlKey®, the user needs both the hardware dongle and media (e.g., a CD-ROM) containing software drivers that must be installed on the computer. Once installed, these drivers can then recognize and communicate with the proprietary hardware dongle. The user carries the dongle, and connects it to the computer for operation. The drivers recognize the dongle, and allow the computer to run. If the dongle is not present the drivers prevent the computer from being operational. The user cannot store data on the dongle, nor are the software components of ControlKey® stored thereon. Instead, the dongle is a hardware encryption device, with which the software components of ControlKey® communicate to obtain use tokens. Although ControlKey® allows a user to “lock” his/her computer such that it can only be operated with a “key” (the dongle), ControlKey® requires an installation of software drivers which would likely be beyond many parents who are not currently using their parental control software. Additionally, the hardware dongle required by ControlKey® is expensive and proprietary.